David St. John recommends Litanies Near Water, poems by Paula Clausson Buck: “Paula Clausson Buck’s latest collection is a stunning and quietly elegant series of meditations upon the power of human endurance and the grace of the imagination. Sometimes these lyrics feel prayer-like in their simplicity, and timeless in their daily revelations.” (LSU)
Gerald Stern recommends My Body, new and selected poems by Joan Larkin: "Over the decades of writing, Joan Larkin has proved her mastery, whether the poem is mythic, elegiac, or biographical. Her honesty is overwhelming, but it is coupled with poetic cunning, gorgeous language, and a rhythm and tone so precise and appropriate that it…
Andrea Barrett, The Air We Breathe, a novel: Barrett’s exquisite, much-anticipated new novel unfolds in the fall of 1916, when America was debating whether to enter the European war, and focuses on a group of tuberculosis patients in an isolated Adirondacks sanatorium. (Norton)
Charles Baxter, The Soul Thief, a novel: A graduate student is drawn into a tangle of relationships that cause him to question his own identity, in Baxter’s compelling new novel. (Pantheon)
Sherman Alexie, Flight, a novel: A troubled teenager is shot back in time, resurfacing as an FBI agent during the civil rights era and an Indian child during the battle of Little Big Horn. Alexie’s first novel in ten years is an irrepressible, groundbreaking romp. (Grove)
Amy Bloom, Away, a novel: Panoramic in scope, Away is the epic story of young Lillian Leyb, who comes to American alone after her family is destroyed in a Russian pogrom. (Random House)
Frank Bidart, Watching the Spring Festival, poems: In these darkly radiant poems, mortality forces the self to question the relation between the life actually lived and what was once the promise of transformation. (FSG)
Jane Hirshfield, After, poems: A luminous investigation into incarnation, transience, and our intimate connection with all existence. (HarperCollins)
Ron Carlson, Five Skies, a novel: In Carlson’s first novel in thirty years, three men gather high in the Rocky Mountains for a construction project and end up revealing themselves in cautiously resonant, profound ways. A voice of striking intimacy and grace. (Viking)
No products in the cart.